Abstract
Youth role is significant in the conservation of water resources. However, youth civic engagement in pond restoration is less explored. This article discusses the research process and ...outcome of an intervention study conducted by the researcher for her Postdoctoral Research. Mixed methods were used to understand community needs, power structures, problems of youth and youth culture. Social group work method was used to motivate youth to restore a pond called Vairakuttai in Katchipattu Village, Tamil Nadu, India. The youth received training in pond restoration, and the impact of the training was analysed using one-sample ‘t’-test. The study revealed that transfer of technology enhances youth civic engagement in pond restoration and raised awareness on the protection of water resources amongst the community. As an outcome, training content and theoretical framework for enhancing youth civic engagement in the restoration of water bodies were developed by the researcher.
•Solid Waste Management (SWM) has become a critical issue in Sri Lanka.•Remuneration and required facilities, staff commitment, motivation, and support from the political leadership, contribution of ...the society and business community were significantly affecting the successful implementation of SWM in Sri Lanka.•Main administrative problems are insufficient land, lack of vehicles, necessary instruments and modern technology, lack of sound national plan including integrated solid waste management program, poor regulatory framework, low labor productivity, awareness of residents and political interference.
The large-scale solid waste generation has been a critical issue in the world today. The absence of a sound national policy for Solid Waste Management (SWM) has caused tremendous negative environmental consequences in Sri Lanka. Despite various programs being implemented by the Municipal Councils and other local governments with the relevant authorities in managing solid waste, most of them have not been successful. Thus, the main purpose of this study is to examine major factors affecting successful policy implementation of the SWM. Further, the study identifies problems and challenges faced in the implementation of SWM. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to gather primary and secondary data. Interview and in-depth discussions were conducted with selected officers who are responsible for implementation of SWM system to identify problems and challenges at the implementation level. Among the 48 LGs in the Western Province, 50% (twenty-four) LGs were selected based on the stratified random sampling method for the quantitative analysis. Normally, in each LG, five officers are responsible for SWM. There are 10 officers in the Colombo Municipal Council who are responsible for SWM. Thus, the total population is 245. Thus, the sample is 125. The sample was consisting of Administrative Heads, Public Health Officer and related officers of each Local Government. A field survey was carried out with a structured questionnaire based on the literature review focusing on the variables of the study. The questionnaire was administered by a Research Assistant.
The study found that the remuneration and other facilities of the staff, their commitment, the motivation and the support from the political leadership, the contribution of the society and the business community are significantly affecting the successful implementation of the SWM program. The SWM has not been successful at its implementation stage due to some administrative problems such as insufficient land for final dumping, composting and recycling, lack of necessary vehicles and an integrated SWM programme, lack of necessary instruments and modern technology, poor regulatory framework, lower labor productivity and quantity, lack of awareness of residents and inappropriate political interference. Finally, the study proposes policy recommendations for addressing those administrative problems and challenges towards efficient and effective solid waste management in the local governments in Sri Lanka.
Cancer has been one of the most serious health challenges to the human kind for a long period of time. Lung cancer is the most prevalent type of cancer which shows higher death rates. However, lung ...cancer mortality rates can be tracked by periodic screening. With the advanced medical science, the society has reaped numerous benefits with respect to screening equipments. Computed Tomography (CT) is one of the popular imaging techniques and this work utilizes the CT images for lung cancer detection. An early detection of lung cancer could prolong the lifetime of the patient and is made effortless by the latest screening technology. Additionally, the accuracy of disease detection can be enhanced with the help of the automated systems, which could support the healthcare experts in effective diagnosis. This article presents an automated lung cancer detection system equipped with machine learning algorithm, which can differentiate between the benign, malignant and normal classes of lung cancer. The accuracy of the proposed lung cancer detection method is around 98.7%, which is superior to the compared approaches.
Abstract Education plays a crucial role in empowering individuals and building a society that is driven by knowledge. In India, higher education focuses on instilling values, attitudes and skills in ...students for their personal growth and the betterment of society. The core principles of higher education in India revolve around social justice, equality, democratic participation and equity. However, despite the constitutional promise of equality and social justice, the Indian social structure still adheres to the Caste system. This leads to social exclusion and creates a significant gap in access to quality education for marginalised groups, particularly the Scheduled Castes (SCs). This article examines the participation trends of SC students in higher education, highlighting the challenges within the education system and policies. It emphasises the need for inclusive education to empower SC students and uphold the principles enshrined in the Indian Constitution. Moreover underscores the value of social work intervention in encouraging the active involvement of SCs in higher education.
This paper focusses on investigation of the effective performance of perceptual based speech features on emotion detection. Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC’s), perceptual linear predictive ...cepstrum (PLPC), Mel frequency perceptual linear prediction cepstrum (MFPLPC), bark frequency cepstral coefficients (BFCC), revised perceptual linear prediction coefficient’s (RPLP) and inverted Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (IMFCC) are the perception features considered. The algorithm using these auditory cues is evaluated with deep neural networks (DNN). The novelty of the work involves analysis of the perceptual features to identify predominant features that contain significant emotional information about the speaker. The validity of the algorithm is analysed on publicly available Berlin database with seven emotions in 1-dimensional space termed categorical and 2-dimensional continuous space consisting of emotions in valence and arousal dimensions. Comparative analysis reveals that considerable improvement in the performance of emotion recognition is obtained using DNN with the identified combination of perceptual features.
The main aim of this paper is to establish stability in set optimization in terms of convergence of a sequence of solution sets of perturbed set optimization problems to the solution set of the ...original set optimization problem both in the image space and the given space. The perturbed problems are obtained by perturbing the feasible set without changing the objective map. Formulations of external stability and internal stability are considered in the image space. External stability, which pertains to complete convergence of a subsequence of weak minimal solution sets, both in the sense of Hausdorff and
convergence of sets, is established under certain compactness and continuity assumptions. This leads to the upper
convergence of the sequence of solution sets in the given space. Internal stability is established for minimal solution sets under certain continuity, compactness and domination assumptions which leads to the lower
convergence of the sequence of solution sets in the given space. External stability for minimal solution sets and internal stability for weak minimal solution sets are deduced under the strict quasiconvexity assumption. In particular, the results are also deduced for a vector optimization problem.
In this paper we extend the notion of minimal solutions for a vector optimization problem considered by Flores-Bazán et al. (J Optim Theory Appl 164:455–478,
2015
) to a set-valued optimization ...problem, with both vector and set solution criteria. Also, we extend the Gerstewitz function proposed by Hernández and Rodríguez-Marín (J Math Anal Appl 325:1–18,
2007
) and use it to scalarize minimal solutions with respect to set criterion. We also provide an existence result of minimal solutions with set criterion. Finally, we investigate links between the minimal solutions with respect to vector criterion and set criterion.
The aim of this paper is to characterize some of the pointwise and global well-posedness notions available in literature for a set optimization problem completely by compactness or upper continuity ...of an appropriate minimal solution set maps. The characterizations of compactness of set-valued maps, lead directly to many characterizations for well-posedness. Sufficient conditions are also given for global well-posedness.
